


Once in Sixty Lifetimes

by morningsaidthemoon



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aangst, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Child Abuse, Child Abuse, Found Family, Gen, Iroh (Avatar) is a Good Uncle, M/M, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Siblings i tell you, Toph Beifong and Zuko are Siblings, Zuko is Not Okay, Zuko's Scar (Avatar), i low key skipped book two, is this canon compliant?? idk, neither is Azula, what did u expect, whatever, zuko needs so many hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26016799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningsaidthemoon/pseuds/morningsaidthemoon
Summary: Zuko breathes as evenly as he can, his hands reaching out on the bedcovers between his own crossed legs and his mother’s. Ursa clasps her hands together, watching her son.Zuko carefully cups his hands around hers.“Azula could do this better,” he tells her, but he clutches her thin hands like his being depends on it.The corners of Ursa’s eyes crinkle when she smiles a rare smile, but Zuko doesn’t see it; he’s focused on her palms.“Azula wasn’t the one who wanted me to know what it felt like to firebend.”---Times Zuko uses bending with his family, both the old one and the new one.
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Katara & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar), Toph Beifong & Zuko
Comments: 57
Kudos: 750





	Once in Sixty Lifetimes

**Author's Note:**

> hhhh it's been so long since I've written anything but I'm pretty happy with this!!
> 
> thank you to my sister, ily a lot

Zuko breathes as evenly as he can, his hands reaching out on the bedcovers between his own crossed legs and his mother’s. Ursa clasps her hands together, watching her son.

Zuko carefully cups his hands around hers.

“Azula could do this better,” he tells her, but he clutches her thin hands like his being depends on it.

The corners of Ursa’s eyes crinkle when she smiles a rare smile, but Zuko doesn’t see it; he’s focused on her palms.

“Azula wasn’t the one who wanted me to know what it felt like to firebend.”

Zuko’s eyes take on a far off look. “It’s like you’re connected to the sun,”

Ursa chuckles, low and quiet like if she was any louder they’d burst this little bubble they have in the dark, on Zuko’s mussed bed. “So you’ve told me.”

“Father says I shouldn’t be connected to any of it. He says I should be above it, and that’s what Azula thinks, too. He says it’s a tool.”

“And what do you think, Zuko?”

She asks it softer than anything else, and Zuko almost doesn’t hear her.

Zuko stares into her hands for a moment, and feels suddenly like holding onto his mother is the only thing keeping him on the ground.

“I think,” he tells her, slowly, “that if I’m above it, I won’t be able to feel when it gets too hot. I won’t be able to stop it if it gets too much. And I won’t be able to have it’s heat. I can’t be separate from my inner flame.”

“And I think that is very wise of you.”

“You think he’s wrong?” and he’s not stupid, he knows he shouldn’t say it.

“Shh, Zuko.”

Zuko turns back to their cupped hands, his around Ursa’s, even though his are smaller and smoother. Their hands are in the shape of a boat, opened like a flower in bloom.

Zuko breathes, and Ursa matches her breath to his. They rise and fall together.

He doesn’t want to hurt her, so he’s careful, and the first sparks are shy and small.

His eyes are closed but his mother watches the flame in her palm flicker to life, and she has to focus to make her breath not falter.

If this is what playing with fire is like, Ursa isn’t as afraid of getting burned. She knows it’s a foolish thought. This little golden flame is not what her husband wields.

“I think you have an inner fire too,” Zuko says, and by the spirits she will not cry, not in front of her son.

He lets it stay, no bigger than a candle’s flame, but she can feel the heat build and she can see it rise and fall with Zuko’s breaths.

“What do you feel?” he asks.

“I feel like I’m connected to the sun.”

\-------------

It is the next year that she leaves.

\--------------

_You will learn respect. And suffering will be your teacher._

They are in front of the highest nobles in the Fire Nation, on a stage like a catwalk. Zuko’s father cups Zuko’s face in both hands. Holding his cheeks. Looking into his eyes, gold into gold.

Zuko’s brain trips over itself because it feels like an embrace. 

His father moves his right hand over his son’s left eye, almost like he’s shielding him from a horrific sight, but Zuko can still see the smile that takes over his father’s face.

(Is love supposed to hurt?)

He screams before his thoughts catch up to the heat. He feels thrown into an active volcano. Zuko is nothing but ash.

Everyone has taken a sharp breath, and Zuko feels like there’s no air left over for him, he’s suffocating. Except-- he can smell the smoke, and something else, something like searing meat. And he hears nothing at all, but his mouth is open and everything in his lungs is going somewhere, and his vision on the right side is going away too. 

Maybe his father has put his other hand there.

\-------------

Zuko cannot even handle being near candles, so he sits in the dark, on a metal ship where all the windows are barred, and the moon through them is the only thing that his one good eye has to see by.

He tried to go on deck, he tried not to be so much of a fuck-up firebender that he could not even face the sun. He spent his time in the daylight trying not to think, and barking at his crew, and biting back at Uncle, who just sits and drinks tea all day. But when a sunburn started to touch his cheeks, he barely got to the railing in time to vomit up what little he’d eaten.

He is a _failure._

No wonder the Fire Lord doesn’t want him.

 _Did he ever?_ a voice that sounds like Azula whispers in a corner of his mind, with a smile so thin and sharp it could split a hair. He wants to answer, Of course he does, he’s my father! but he’s had this argument with himself before, so many times that it reads like a script in his head. 

_He doesn’t want you_ , Azula’s echo taunts, but Zuko does not answer this time.

The Fire Lord wants the Avatar. He’s hiding, somewhere, he _must be_ , he _has to be._

So Zuko will deliver, and even though he’s already searched the Western Air Temple to no avail, there are other places the Avatar could hide.

Zuko will find him.

And then Zuko will go _home._

\-----------

He cannot go home without defeating the Avatar, once he finds him, and there is no doubt in Zuko’s mind that he will have to fight.

But Zuko still can’t stay in the sun too long, or sit around a fire, or be too close when firebenders spar, because he freezes and shakes and the still-healing skin around his left eye goes numb.

He meditates, but he does it in the dark.

When he finally brings himself to bend, it’s in the middle of the night, and rain falls so fast and hard that it’s angled into his window, and he can just feel it’s spray. Surrounded by water, Zuko tells himself, he could put out a flame without bending.

Under the moon instead of the sun, his fire should be as weak as the rest of him.

He starts with a leaf, a beginners exercise. He feeds sparks through his bloodstream and lets the middle of the leaf catch, holding them there, keeping them from consuming it.

He needs control, he knows it. He has his pride, but still, he’s not _stupid._

He burned much easier than he thought he would, after all.

The leaf stays whole, except for the tiny blackened ring in the center, and now when Zuko breathes he can feel the air.

“Prince Zuko--” Iroh pushes open the door to the dark room and suddenly the leaf is on fire in Zuko’s hands, embers re-igniting until the blaze is flared three feet tall, and the room is visible for a split second, washed in red. 

His fire hasn’t been golden in years.

Zuko can’t even drop the leaf, he can only stare at it, and half his face ceases to exist in his mind as Iroh tamps down the fire, his eyes so round with fear it almost looks comical.

The flame catches the tips of Zuko’s fingers as it dies, and tears Zuko promised himself would not come back roll over the ridges of his still-healing scar.

\-----------

Iroh decides his nephew should not train alone.

They sit in Iroh’s cabin, at night, the two of them with a candle-sized flame in the center of Iroh’s palm. Zuko still won’t touch it, and the one time Iroh tried to put his nephew’s hands between his own, open like a lotus in bloom, Zuko snached his hands back like it hurt.

So Iroh holds one flame for the both of them, and together they breathe. 

\------------

Iroh has never done things traditionally, at least not in recent memory, which is how Zuko finds himself holding a porcelain teapot between his hands in place of an ordinary flame during their nightly meditation.

“I think you are ready to take the next step towards bending fully again, nephew,” Iroh says, “and I believe that brewing some lovely jasmine tea may be exactly the practice you need.”

“Uncle, this isn’t-- this isn’t how to firebend,” Zuko holds the pot away from himself, touching it as little as humanly possible.

“There is no one way to bend, Prince Zuko.”

The ever insistent use of his title makes him think, sharply, of home. Of Azula. If she could see him right now, see him sitting on the ground holding a pot instead of on his feet throwing flames like a real firebender.

She would laugh herself sick.

He’s pretty close to doing that himself, but he’s not sure why.

His heart is beating like a wild rabbit-mouse in his chest, and he feels simultaneously thrown into deep water and given something far too shallow.

Iroh sits easily across from him, holding his own pot of water in his lap. He closes his eyes, and begins to take deep, showy breaths, and cautiously Zuko copies. 

He hopes the crew doesn’t hear about this.

\------------

Zuko burns the tea, but that’s _okay_ with Uncle Iroh. 

\------------

Azula’s laughter echoes in his hollow head when the Avatar escapes the ship.

_The Avatar._

Zuko spits sparks as he paces his quarters, some sick satisfaction pooling in his stomach. Soon he’ll go home, _he’ll go home._

Zuko meditates alone that night, flame in his palm and breathing slowly, even though he wants to rip apart the crust of the world with his bare hands, and his whole body feels like it’s drowning in flickering fire. 

When Iroh knocks, he pretends he is asleep.

\-----------

(Zhao is on the ground, and Zuko’s hand is outstretched towards his face.

He could do it. He could do it right now, he could brand a replica mark across Zhao’s face, he could make someone else bear the same pain that he had to. 

_(Could he?)_

Zhao is breathing hard, and yelling at him, but Zuko can’t see clearly, and a numbness so strong he hasn’t felt in years takes over his left eye.

For a moment, he thinks he might be looking down into the face of a thirteen-year-old child.

_Please, Father!_

_Your loyal son._

Gold eyes into gold.)

\-----------

(He should have marked Zhao, but Zuko was banished for a reason, wasn’t he?)

\------------

Zuko is tired, but he’s forgotten how to sleep.

He burns village after village chasing the Avatar, but he is weak, and does not feel satisfaction from the smoke and the ash and the pain that eats away at people wherever he sets foot.

He lets their faces blur in his mind, and knows that Azula would not be so incapable.

The boat beneath his feet rises and falls with the water, but here Zuko doesn’t waver, even though a small part of his mind whispers that he’s more comfortable with water than with fire. 

\------------

The moon goes out.

The princess of The Northern Water Tribe is gone, and Zuko… Zuko would have done the same for the Fire Nation, he would have.

The moon returns. 

Now her name is Yue.

\-----------

_Azula always lies._

But when she shows up in the Earth Kingdom herself, along with the words _father wants you home_ , Zuko lets himself believe it.

For as long as he can, at least, until someone says the word _prisoners_ and the word _liar_ races around Zuko’s head so fast he can barely think.

Azula can lightning bend. 

Of course she can. Zuko almost laughs; his prodigy younger sister, always so far ahead of him. He can still remember her first flame, red and orange and made of wonder, at four years old. Zuko, who at six had not produced so much as a spark had been the proudest in the city.

 _Home_ , where his mother was, before Azula meant harsh burns and harsher words, before scars and dishonor and the Avatar.

Zuko shoots red fire at his younger sister.

Home is starting to be a moment in time, one which Zuko can not travel back to.

\----------

Zuko cannot firebend in Ba Sing Se.

His inner flame is burning, but it’s burning without him.

\---------

The caverns are freezing, and so Zuko breathes flames as the Avatar and his group make ricocheting plays off the walls and Azula and the Dai Li counteract each one.

Azula wields lightning like its always been in her blood, and Zuko supposes it has been. He flinches when the bolt hits the Avatar squarely, but can’t help but wonder if lightning is part of him, too.

The water tribe girl takes the Avatar.

Zuko doesn’t think he’s dead.

\---------

He’s at the Palace, but he’s there based on lies and assumptions and Azula. He sits beside his father, who is beside his sister, behind a curtain of flames. Smoke didn’t used to bother him this much, did it? 

Uncle won’t speak to him.

Mai is his best friend, and neither of them want to be more. They are anyway.

Is he home?

\----------

No.

\---------

Fire Lord Ozai gestures the guards away, and Zuko’s heartbeat is skittering in his chest, but he breathes anyhow.

Sparks don’t come out-- Zuko knows the sky is dark by now, and he can faintly hear sounds of the invasion echoing through the walls. They won’t win-- the Avatar won’t win.

At least not yet.

“You’ve come to tell the truth,” Ozai says, “in the middle of an eclipse. This should be interesting.”

A sadistic smile settles itself on Ozai’s face, and he spreads his arms like he’s welcoming his son.

This time Zuko is not foolish enough to think it might be an embrace.

_How could you justify a duel with a child?_

For the second time in his life, Zuko speaks his mind before his father.

\------------

Like things apparently tend to do in his family, him and Ozai end things with lightning.

Zuko can see now why Azula likes it as he pushes the electricity through his body like a wave: the thrill, the absolute power that crackles through your veins, the way one wrong move can send you into darkness. A wager with the highest stakes.

It’s his sister’s kind of thing.

\-----------

Zuko doesn’t sleep the whole way to the Western Air Temple. He’s alive with nerves and shock and fear, and nothing will stop him.

\-----------

He burns the earthbender girl on accident.

\-----------

She _forgives him._

And tomorrow he begins training.

\----------

The Avatar is afraid of bending fire.

It’s like he thinks it’ll bite, or lash out, but Zuko gets to the core of that fear quickly enough.

“When I first tried bending fire, I wasn’t patient. I ended up burning Katara.” He says it quietly, guiltily. “She healed herself, but that doesn’t erase the fact that I hurt her.”

 _He burned her._ Zuko’s scar tingles at the edges. _But he’s ashamed of it._

Zuko takes a deep breath, makes himself calm, lets the wind wash over him like waves. Aang is looking at him, a little concerned, and Zuko has to forcefully stop himself from snapping at the boy.

“What-- what do you mean by you weren’t patient?”

“There was someone I met, Master Jeong Jeong, who I tried to learn firebending from, even though I hadn’t mastered water yet, or earth-- I thought it would be my only chance to. I didn’t wait to try the bigger stuff. I got impatient and tried it even though he told me not to.”

Zuko nods. “Fire has a mind of its own sometimes. It’s alive with or without you.”

“That’s what Master Jeong Jeong said, too. But I got better at waiting-- at listening. Toph taught me!”

Zuko tells him, “How about we start with a leaf?”

Aang swallows sharply.

Zuko knows what this is like. At least Aang isn’t afraid of the sun.

He puts his hands out for Aang, a reassurance, and the small boy takes them shakily. Zuko tries to push all his confidence and belief through their linked palms. Iroh did this for him, and now it is Zuko’s turn.

\-----------

His bending is _gone._ Zuko hadn’t even noticed, before, but now he feels hollow, yet heavier. His inner fire is a candle, and the sparks in his body are so quiet and fragile he feels like all his bones are no longer attached. His nerves are free-floating. 

A single gust of wind will blow him apart.

He can’t even do the breath of fire to stay warm.

\----------

When he and Aang come face to face with the dragons, both of their flames snuffed out, his only thought is _this is Toph’s fault, this is Toph’s fault, this is--_

Then Aang tells him to dance, and the steps fall into place seamlessly, and he feels like he’s connected to the sun. 

It’s been years since it felt like that. Since _he_ felt like that.

\-----------

On Appa, on the way back to the Temple, Zuko breathes sparks into his palm, and a confident, small flame takes up residence there.

It’s just as golden as Zuko remembers, just like it was years and years ago, in a messy bed across from his mother.

\----------

The Boiling Rock is a disaster, but Zuko doesn’t know what he expected. 

“Why are you _here_ ,” the Warden announciates every word, pacing in front of Zuko, who is bound roughly to a chair. “I can’t imagine you came to turn yourself in, after all,” 

Zuko doesn’t answer him. After Azula, this is just play.

 _You broke my niece’s heart_ , he says, and Zuko flinches. Not for the right reason-- if he really did break her heart, it was not into the pieces everyone expected.

Zuko misses Mai, though. He misses his first ever friend.

\----------

Sokka comes up with a plan, because of course he does. He’s Sokka. 

Zuko meets Suki (who he likes but sometimes feels a twinge of annoyance towards when she and Sokka are a little too close), who seems to trust him as long as Sokka does. 

Sokka gives him a wrench and a grin that makes him feel like they’re the only two in on the secret.

\---------

Zuko has never been more thankful for his breath of fire.

\---------

Sokka’s father arrives, and all their plans go out the window.

\---------

(“I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Come on, Zuko, we all know that’s a lie,” Mai is cracking, just the slightest bit, and Zuko bites back layers of surprise, mostly because he can see pain under her usual immaculate mask.

“The truth is, I guess I don’t know you,” she says, and it _hurts._ She holds the scroll out to him, and he can see his own shaky writing.

_Dear Mai…_

“All I get is a letter?” 

Zuko wishes the answer was no.

_I didn’t mean to._

_This is about the Fire Nation._

“I never wanted to hurt you. But I have to do this, to save my country.”

Mai looks directly into his face, but she knows he’s not a liar, that he’s not like his sister.

“I would have gone with you,” Mai whispers to him, when the guards are talking, caught up in something outside the room, when she has a chance to stoop to his ear. “I would have gone with you when you left.” 

“Without Ty Lee?” he asks.)

\---------

 _Azula is here,_ and Zuko mostly wants to cry, and at least the gondola is moving away from her and Ty Lee, though nothing like that has ever stopped them before. Sure enough, with only a second of contemplation, they’re both in the air.

“This is a rematch I’ve been waiting for,” Suki says bitterly, and Zuko nods.

“Me too.”

He’s not sure if he’s telling the truth.

There’s no time to think about it, because then he’s on the roof of the gondola with Suki and Sokka behind him, and the wind in his hair feels like it’s daring him to move.

Azula lands in front of him, and with a snarl on her face and her hair in perfect order. Azula is steel. Zuko knows that she is what he was meant to be. What he was raised to be. 

Zuko failed his father, but he will not fail his friends.

Golden sparks fall from his fingertips. He breathes like he’s meditating, keeping as sharp of focus on Sokka as he is on Azula. Zuko isn’t going to let him get hurt.

\----------

Hakoda makes him nervous.

\----------

“C’mon, Sparky,” Toph offers a hand to him, and as soon as he takes it in his shaking one, he’s tugged away from camp, away from a circle of light and laughter into a darker part of the Western Air Temple.

Zuko knows Toph can feel him trembling, can feel the same heartbeat he can hear thumping in his ears, louder than everything else, but he can’t slow it down, not since Hakoda has been near.

At some point, after a few tries, he pulls a flickering flame into the palm of his hand because the overgrown ground of the temple keeps making him stumble. He’s positive he couldn’t find his way back now by himself, and the darkness in both directions is cavernous, so he keeps one hand firmly in Toph’s and the other aloft for light.

“Where-- where’re we going?” 

“You didn’t think to ask before?” Toph shoots back at him, but it’s so gentle that Zuko thinks she only said it on principle. 

“We’re going somewhere quiet, Sparky. I thought you might be a little overwhelmed, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Zuko mumbles, and they’re both quiet until they come to a small terrace laced with vines, at which Toph promptly flops down onto the stone, pulling him with her.

“So,” Toph says, with all the correctness in her voice that a twelve-year-old should not be able to have, “you’re not okay.”

Zuko almost laughs, and Toph twists her free hand in a jerky motion and a circle indent appears in the floor. 

“You wanna meditate, Sparky?”

Zuko’s already feeling a little bit steadier away from everybody, but his heart is still haywire even though he’s a little further from the edge.

“If you wanted a fire pit you could have stayed back at camp,” he says softly, and Toph punches him in the arm. He still notices the small grin at the corners of her mouth. 

“C’mon, light it already, I’m cold.”

Zuko focuses on his breathing instead of answering, shifting his hands onto his knees instead of in his lap, so the empty firepit completes his circuit instead of cupped palms.

Toph grips his arm like an anchor.

The fire starts slowly, mostly because of shaky breathing and occasional noises that startle him from his focus. Zuko wonders what Azula would think of how hard something this simple is for him right now, but he dismisses her and her serrated voice.

He thinks of the dragons, and breathes. 

\----------

“You know what, Sparky? I have something for you.”

Zuko can’t tell how long he’s been meditating before Toph interrupts him, but he opens his eyes anyhow. The fire in the pit continues to breathe with him.

“You do?”

Toph takes her hand off Zuko’s arm and turns a bit, so they’re facing each other. She twists her fingers and her black armband unfolds itself smoothly. She pulls a small piece off of it, moulding it so easily it looks like clay, not solid rock.

“It’s a meteor-- we got it right before you, you know, happened. Sokka’s sword is made of the same material. His sword and this band were born of a crisis.”

“Fitting, for this group.”

Toph punches him in the side.

“My point is, I’m gonna give you something,” Toph rolls the small chunk of meteor between two fingers, using her other hand to put back the armband. With a precise motion, she pulls a hole into the center of the blob, shaping it carefully into a small midnight ring.

“This isn’t ‘cause I like you, Sparky,” Toph says, and Zuko snorts. She ignores this. “It’s so I don’t lose you somewhere, you idiot. Not that you’re particularly hard to find. Your heartbeat is like a beacon.”

Zuko takes the ring from Toph’s outstretched hand, slipping it onto his pinky finger, where it fits perfectly when Toph twists her hand. It’s smooth like rocks on a beach that have lain in the waves for thousands of years, and Zuko smiles when he looks at it.

“Thank you,” he tells her, earnestly, and Toph grins.

\----------

(“You’re connected to Snoozles too, now.” Zuko bristles at her words, and is glad that Toph can’t see when he blushes. She cackles anyhow.)

(Miraculously, the flames in the firepit are still calm and even as they shrink and grow.)

\---------

In a tent in the center of the White Lotus’s camp, Zuko and his uncle sit across from each other, a single teapot between them. They breathe together, and the water inside doesn’t get quite to boiling before Iroh takes two cups and some loose leaf Jasmine tea out of a chest.

Zuko doesn’t know whether he wants to smile or cry.

\---------

The courtyard is on fire, and everything in Zuko’s sister has snapped. Azula is steel, but steel is brittle.

When she laughs it’s purely mania. Her hair is loose now, cut sharply and impatiently and all out of place, and Zuko knows that everything is wrong. He can remember brushing Azula’s hair when they were little. He can remember their mother putting it up. He can remember the three of them _laughing._

But not like this. 

Everything is inferno. Flames lick the tips of his fingers and are melting the soles of his boots, but he fights anyhow, he fights his little sister.

The two of them are both so very broken, only they’ve fractured in different ways.

Zuko wants to wrap her up and hold her together himself.

Instead he shoots waves of fire at her, one after another, power from the comet and desperation spurring him on as she dodges and flies around him.

_I’ll show you lightning._

Zuko jumps, and he is only static energy.

\----------

Azula snarls and sobs and hiccups, and Zuko doesn’t know what to do with this broken shell of his sister.

“Azula,” he says, only her name, then she’s back to spitting fire and blood at him, at the air, at the cracked cobblestones. 

Katara has water in her hand in a moment, and a tendril reaches out to her forehead. No matter how Azula jerks and twists, she can’t make it leave, and her eyes start to look heavy as Katara knocks her out, as softly as she can. Zuko knows she only does it like that for him.

“Zuzu,” Azula’s eyes are glassy and half closed, and she’s somewhere floating in between sleep and consciousness. 

“Zuzu, did mother love me?” she whispers, and then her eyes flutter closed as she hits the ground.

\----------

Zuko feels a little sick at the fact that he’s grateful Azula isn’t awake.

“Are you… are you okay?” It's the first thing Katara asks him after a couple of minutes in which he’s been staring into a candle-sized flame in his palm. It breathes with him, stuttering and shaky.

Zuko swallows, staring across the courtyard at the form of his sister, sprawled on the floor, her hair like a blackened burn on the stones.

“No,” he says hoarsely. “No, I’m not. Are you?”

“They aren’t back yet,” is all she says. She looks at the fire he holds, and nods to it. “What’s that for?”

“I’m… I’m holding a vigil. For all the fire nation soldiers who died today.”

Katara puts a hand on his arm.

Zuko can’t stop looking back at Azula. “She cut her hair,” he whispers, and he doesn’t know exactly what he means. He keeps talking anyhow.

“She used to let me brush it. She-- our mother would put our hair up. Our mother…”

“Yeah,” Katara whispers. “Did you know… did you know that my mom was the one who helped Sokka shave his head for the first time? He was _thrilled,_ he kept it in that same ponytail for a week without taking it out.”

Zuko lets out a watery laugh. “Of course he’d do that,”

And then suddenly Sokka is _there_ , along with Aang and Toph and Suki, and they’re all _okay._

\----------

(Sokka kisses Zuko, and everything is so sweet and easy and comfortable that Zuko only wonders why they hadn’t been doing this sooner.)

\----------

With a gold flaming headpiece in his hair, Zuko is almost toppled by a hug from Uncle Iroh, who is crying, and when he turns to look at his friends-- his _family,_ they are too.

A family made of all four nations. What better way to begin a new era?

\----------

“What’s it like to bend?” Sokka asks it so quietly, and just a little bit nervously, and Zuko’s mostly sure he isn’t joking.

Sokka’s holding his breath, he can tell, because Sokka’s back is up against Zuko’s chest, his head against Zuko’s collarbone, and they’ve been breathing in tandem. The outline of the capital city roofs is just visible out of their bedroom windows.

There’s only moonlight to see by, so Sokka’s face is just a fuzzy silhouette.

“What do you mean?” Zuko says it even softer, because he doesn’t want Sokka to drop the topic; he thinks this is something Sokka has wondered for a long time.

“What-- what’s it feel like?”

Zuko lets out a long breath.

“It’s… it’s like coming up for air,” Zuko shifts and laces his hand with Sokka’s, “you want me to show you?”

Sokka sits upright in their bed, twisting to face Zuko. “You can _do_ that?”

Zuko grins. Then his face softens a bit. “Not entirely, no, but I can a little. If you want.” He tugs on Sokka’s hand and they settle across from each other, cross-legged, their knees touching.

“I did this once,” Zuko tells him quietly as he motions for Sokka’s other hand, “a long time ago, I did this with my mother.”

Sokka presses a kiss to his forehead. “She wanted to know what it was like?”

“Maybe, but… it was mostly me. I wanted her to feel it.”

_Like you’re connected to the sun._

Zuko shakes himself, and gathers their hands in the shape of a boat, open like a flower in bloom. Sokka’s are between Zuko’s, and he’s bouncing slightly on the mattress.

“You ready?”

“Ready, Mr. Fire Lord,”

“Oh hush,”

Sokka pecks him on the lips and then tugs at their hands.

“C’mon, I wanna bend, I’ve waited all my life,”

Zuko takes a deep breath in, then out, showy enough that Sokka catches on and copies him, so they’re breathing in tandem.

Zuko closes his eyes, but Sokka can’t look away as small purposeful sparks catch in the air between his hands, every one of them golden.

With one more breath the sparks fold into fire. The petals of the flame peel upwards into tiny curls of smoke. Sokka feels like he’s looking into something breathing, like he’s looking at a beating heart.

The little golden fire is so close to his hands that in any other circumstance he would be scared, but he trusts Zuko. And looking over their hands into Zuko’s open face, Sokka knows that he’s trusted too.

“I love you, you know that?”

“Yeah,” Zuko tells him, opening his eyes just a little. He’s smiling shyly even though Sokka’s said it a thousand times. “Yeah, I did know that.”

Sokka kisses him one more time over the golden flame in their palms. 

Zuko looks down into the bright gold, a reflection of his eyes, and tells him, “I wish you could have seen the dragons.”

\----------

It’s the next year that he gets Druk.

\---------

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, please leave comments or kudos they make my day <3
> 
> and come say hi on tumblr!! I'm @morningsaidthemoon and I do art sometimes, I'd love to scream with you about atla


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